Translate

Partners

Over the past several weeks since the initial exposure of the NSA spying scandals, we have been exposed to yet more scandals, one after another in a constant flow of depressing news that even George Orwell could never dream up. We've heard of the FBI using spy drones on U.S. soil, PRISM, Boundless Informant, and the worst one yet, X-Keyscore, just to name a few of the untold many. But then today, the world truly came crashing down.

Over a year ago, troubled by the news of the rubber-stamp FISA secret courts using the PATRIOT Act to gain unfettered access to anything they want, and force unconstitutional gag orders on service providers to forbid them from ever speaking of any forced participation, we began looking for alternatives to Google Mail. (Yes, unfortunately, due to the unfathomably high level of spam we receive, we use Google Mail to handle our email service.) We finally came to the conclusion that, while Google itself is not inherently evil and does try to fight for civil and privacy rights, it is ultimately powerless to the U.S. government's will. Even though we really do have absolutely nothing to hide (HackThisSite and its staff does not and will never participate in illegal activities), we value our privacy over giving the government wanton open access.

We considered Lavabit, due to how it stores mail in such an encrypted fashion that not even its admins can gain access. (And no, Hushmail was never an option.) However, Lavabit's limited resources made us uncomfortable with relying on them, and we eventually walked away from the idea. Good thing, too.

This is incredibly haunting and hits close to home because, in these past few weeks of NSA leaks, we have reconsidered approaching Lavabit about using their services after all. And now they're gone.

So this is what defeat truly feels like, we suppose. When your only options are to either "go dark" (as the FBI calls it) and remove the government's ability to freely spy on your every communication, or allow for that unfettered spying with absolutely no recourse, and even your encrypted communications can be intercepted, what kind of age do we live in now? We cannot even protect our own privacy rights without fear of being labeled as terrorists.

Perhaps this is the truest and most real-world definition of tyranny.

---

We also wish to extend our deepest sympathies to Lavabit over the trials and tribulations they are currently being put through, and we also wish thank them profusely for sticking to their morals over caving in to government pressure. The level of ethics they have displayed, while those may have seriously pissed off their customers, is ultimately the best and most righteous path they could have chosen. The true heroes in this world are the ones who become the David against a Goliath, fearlessly refusing to back down. Godspeed, Lavabit, you are an inspiration.

Lavabit has a defense fund and we strongly encourage our users to donate to it.

And to make matters even worse it so seems even the Tor network is flawed when it comes to protecting your privacy. Recently the FBI managed to use a zero-day exploit to obtain the location of the founder of Freedom Hosting and are now charging him with the distribution of child pornography.
Even though I can only encourage the hunt for pedofiles we should consider this a wakeup call among hackers as well, if we can't even communicate privately through services like Tor anymore they are taking away our final lines of defense...
This and the fact that Freedom Hosting was also the host of anonymous e-mail service Tormail makes this very bad news indeed...
Soon we'll either have to run everything through VPN or just accept that protecting our privacy has become an impossible task.
source: http://thehackernews.com/2013/08/Firefox-Exploit-Tor-Network-child-pornography-F reedom-Hosting.html

Lie Number 1: "Mom, there's a green and red zebra in the front yard..." and mom beats your butt because everyone knows that there are no green and red zebras.

Lie Number 2: is the lie that politicians and news media tell. Lie Number 2 is to tell only part of the truth in order to manipulate the audience, in the case of the media, to sell toothpaste and beer. In the case of politicians in order to manipulate the audience to support or favor the politician.

Lie Number 3: Is the lie that the Military tells, to tell the truth in such a fashion that it won't be believed till it's too late. Case in point, military radio communication is predominantly computers talking back and forth to each other about people doing things that don't exist. The one or two spoken communications that are real, to someone listening in, are indistinguishable from the false communications. One would never be able to tell the one communication from the other in time to matter.

The most depressing part of this is that we (the American people) let this happen. It was so slow and subtle, most people didn't notice at first. Kind of like "Oh, look there is a man in a suit across the street staring at you." Shrug. "So? Let him look. I have nothing to hide." Then it's no longer a man staring, it's a camera staring. Then it's a camera staring at everything. Then it's the public posting of the pictures of you, still doing nothing wrong but now it's creepy and intrusive. Then we all started signing "agreements" for the privilege of entertainment (or the pursuit of happiness, as some would say). The agreements were so convoluted and complex, we stopped reading them. Companies like Google promised us the utmost security if we put our lives in their hands. Because after all, we have a Bill of Rights to protect our privacy and our liberties, and Google-types assure us that they can't hurt us through that Bill of Rights armor.

That is, until the "Bill of Rights" is suddenly changed to "Bill of Unprotected Suggestions that are only valid when convenient to our government." This is the government that is run by the people, remember? The people...why that would be us! We are still allowing the government to rule the people instead of the other way around, the way our forefathers intended. (Sorry for that dam burst of a tangent)

Once the DHS/NSA/Feds started infiltrating the Tor, the browser started crashing. I uninstalled it and am just waiting until this all blows over.